So You Say Your A Vegetarian? Really BE A Vegetarian!

What’s all the vegetarian talk about lately? Do you know what you’re actually saying when you say: “I’m a vegetarian. I could NEVER eat meat.” Or “How could anyone eat meat? The poor cow.” as the person polishes off his or her DQ in a cone. “I just never felt like I could eat an animal with fur.” That’s one of my favorites. I don’t mean to sound smug but I guess I’m just in a mood lately where I feel frustrated that people don’t know what they’re talking about!

Knowledge is power. You should have the power to make an educated decision. It took me a lot of digging to find out the truth about some of the things I used to eat. I’d like to teach you some of what I have learned. Then you can make an educated decision based on your knowledge not the lack of it. That’s power!

I think it’s great that some people don’t want to eat meat, I really do. Usually it’s because they feel compassion for animals. Do these people realize though that they aren’t doing the animals any good if they still eat dairy? Cheese, milk, yogurt, ice cream, sour cream, and cottage cheese–all of these products come from cows, right? (Unless otherwise specified as product from goats, etc…) In ingesting these products you are killing cows, the animal you have compassion for! I know you probably didn’t know that. Let me explain what I have learned.

In order for a cow to give milk it must be pregnant. The majority of cows in this country are artificially inseminated to become pregnant so they can have babies and get milked at the highest possible production rate. The babies that are delivered don’t get their mom’s milk though. Not even one time. You get that milk. Humans get the baby’s milk that is meant for them. But that’s not even my main point. Here’s what I’m driving at:

At birth, that instant, the baby (babies) are immediately removed and taken from their mom to suck down a soy product out of a plastic bottle. The mother, poor mom, is now, mooing and crying and pacing in anguish, looking for her baby (babies) sometimes for many, many days. She knows that the baby (babies) she has just delivered (that Mother Nature has told her to love and care for) has been removed. She is now in a state of panic, anguish and mourning. She will never have a chance to clean and nuzzle her baby, let alone let the baby feed from her. It’s so sickening.

If the baby is a boy it is taken away, fed and immediately put into a veal crate, literally a crate, where for 10 to 16 weeks it lives, (not really–just survives in torture) with a chain around its neck and not a step taken in any direction because the farmer gets to double dip–milk and tender veal for the market. If the baby boy cow walked he’d develop muscle tone and then his flesh wouldn’t “melt in your mouth.” You see, baby boy cows (veal) is a BY-PRODUCT of the dairy industry. The farmers want milk for humans but babies have to come for milk to be produced for human consumption.

If a female is born she is taken immediately from the mom, also, fed a soy product out of a plastic bottle but then she’s put into a pen with all the other newborn baby girls, no mommas. Then at about nine months her torturous life starts as a dairy cow. Penned up, inseminated, pregnancy, delivery, baby (babies) taken, milked by machine, infections, sores and bloody painful teats from over milking and no healing time. And so the cycle goes…insemination, pregnancy, delivery, baby removal, milked by machine while in agony, infections, sores, bloody teats, no healing…etc…

So now you have some information you may not have had before. I know I didn’t until I started digging. If you really, really love animals and you’re a vegetarian just try for a day or two to abstain from dairy. Or try a product or two and see what you think. Eat coconut milk ice cream, put almond milk in your cereal. Try soy sour cream on your tacos. Buy Daiya shredded cheese and put it on your nacho chips. I promise you you will really be saving some lives.

Comments

Bruce, Cows that get to graze definitely have somewhat of a nicer life than those kept in captivity–in fact that was what I would try to buy before I became vegan, following those producers who were “kinder” to their cows. However, the babies are still taken and forced in to a life of servitude or a very premature death. There’s no getting milk without pregnancy!

As far as organic milk goes, that has nothing to do with a cows’ life that just means the milk isn’t full of antibiotics–the cows aren’t treated any differently.
Thank you for your curiosity.
If you want to buy milk and milk products from “kinder” famers try the brand “Organic Valley.” It’s a co-op made up of 700 friendlier farmers.